I've been reading a lot again these past few days, so rather than telling you all how I laze about the house everyday, reading to my heart's content, I'll just post some quotes from aforementioned reading material that struck a chord.
Obviously, a quote dump.
And....
Go.
FIGHT CLUB,
Chuck Palahniuk:
If you don't know what you want, you end up with a lot you don't.
Everyone smiles with that invisible gun to their head.
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new
character... Would you slow down? Or speed up?
Remember this, the people you're trying to step on, we're everyone you depend on. We're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you're asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won't. And we're just learning this fact. So don't fuck with us.
I felt trapped. I was too complete. I was too perfect.
And a moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.
On a long enough time line, everyone's survival rate drops to zero.
Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.
Evacuate soul, now.
That old saying, about how you always kill the thing you love, well, it works both ways.
CHOKE,
Chuck Palahniuk:
You had to risk your life to get love. You had to go right to the edge of death to ever be saved.
Art never comes from happiness.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
The truth is, every son raised by a single mom is pretty much born married.
Orgasms flood the body with endorphins that kill pain and tranquilize you.
Until you find something to fight for, you settle for something to fight against.
The truth was, if Christ had laughed on the cross, or spat on the Romans, if he'd done anything more than just suffer, the kid would've liked church a lot more.
Torture is torture and humiliation is humiliation only when you choose to suffer.
When somebody saves you, the first thing you want to do is save other people.
There's an opposite to deja vu. They call it jamais vu.
More and more it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.
We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.
We use criticism as a fake participation.
Parenthood is the opiate of the masses.
Nothing is as good as you can imagine it. No one is as beautiful as she is in you head. Nothing is as exciting as your fantasy.
Everybody wants more excitement from their life than they'll ever get.
The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.
What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.
We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.
DIARY,
Chuck Palahniuk:
The weather today is increasing concern followed by full-blown dread.
By the time you read this, you'll be older than you remember.
If you're reading this, welcome back to reality. This is where all that glorious, unlimited potential of your youth has led. All the unfulfilled promise. Here's what you've done with your life.
The weather today is an increasing trend toward denial.
The bourgeois daydreams of some poor white trash kid.
You have endless ways you can commit suicide without dying dying.
A couple drinks. A couple aspirin. Repeat.
Just for the record, the weather today is partly soused with occasional bursts of despair and irritation.
What you don't understand you can make mean anything.
Everyone's in their own personal coma.
Today's weather is partly furious with occasional fits of rage.
Just for the record, the weather today is partly suspicious with chances of betrayal.
Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.
Just for the record, today's weather is nervous disgust with tentative apprehension.
Just for the record, the weather today is bitter with occasional fits of jealous rage.
The weather today is partly angry, leading to resignation and ultimatums.
These days even the best part of any city is just a deluxe luxury suite in hell.
You people with your ex-wives and stepchildren, your blended families and failed marriages,
you've ruined your world and now you want to ruin mine.
You can find fresh pain every time you discover what you pretty much already know.
Just for the record, the weather today is increasing turmoil with a possible physical and emotional breakdown.
Just for the record, the weather today is calm and sunny, but the air is full of bullshit.
The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.
It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness.
We have no scar to show for happines. We learn so little from peace.
Just for the record, the weather today is slightly maudlin.
THE HUNGER GAMES,
Suzanne Collins:
Stupid people are dangerous.
Pity does not get you aid. Admiration at your refusal to give in does.
These are the Hunger Games, and ordinary isn’t the norm.
Promising tomorrow will be more hopeful than this awful piece of time we call today.
Remember, we’re madly in love, so it’s all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.
CATCHING FIRE,
Suzanne Collins:
You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know.
SOMETHING BORROWED,
Emily Giffin:
I don't break up. I trade up.
Maybe I am just a bad person. Maybe the only reason I have been good up to this point has less to do with my true moral fiber and more to do with the fear of getting caught. I play by the rules because I am risk-averse. I didn't go along with the junior-high shoplifting gags at the White Hen Pantry partly because I knew it was wrong, but mostly because I was sure that I would be the one to get caught. I never cheated on an exam for the same reason. Even now I don't take office supplies from work because I figure that somehow the firm's surveillance cameras will catch me in the act. So if that is what motivates me to be good, do I really deserve credit? Am I really a good person? Or just a cowardly pessimist?
We were both driven less by the desire to succeed than by an all-pervasive fear of failure.
Nate was my escape. And sometimes that can feel an awful lot like love.
There is emotion, and then there is what you do about it.
The world is not black and white. There are no moral absolutes.
This is why you should never, ever get your hopes up. This is why you should see the glass as half empty. So when the whole thing spills, you aren't as devastated.
I had a best friend. There was such security in that, such a sense of identity and belonging.
It's just a little heartbreak. You will get over this. I think of all the hearts breaking at this moment, in Manhattan, all over the world. All of the overwhelming grief. It makes me feel less alone to think that other people are getting their insides torn to tiny bits. Husbands leaving wives after twenty years of marriage. Children crying out, "Don't leave me, Daddy! Please stay!" Surely what I feel doesn't compare to that kind of pain. It was only a summer romance, I think. Never meant to last beyond August.
What's your pleasure?
The jig is up, baby.
When you're in love, sometimes you have to swallow your pride, and sometimes you have to fight to keep your pride. It's a balance. But when the relationship is right, you find that balance.
But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.
SOMETHING BLUE,
Emily Giffin:
After all, there is nothing like a mother telling you that you're making a bad decision to convince you that what you are doing is the absolute best course of action.
I'd like to say it was strength of character and good morals, but it also had a lot to do with stubborn pride.
10 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT YOU,
Julia Quinn:
I can imagine no greater bliss than to lie about, reading novels all day.
You're very hard on your fellow man, Miss Winslow.
Were it not for misunderstandings, we would be sadly lacking in great literature.
What would life be without bleak moments?
That had been his moment. His very own point of division. He wondered if everyone's lives had a dividing point. A moment which sat clearly between before and after.
THE RED PYRAMID,
Rick Riordan:
You shouldn't lie to children!
Fairness does not mean everyone gets the same, Fairness means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself. Do you understand?
From sand they come, and to sand they return.
This is not school, Sadie. You cannot learn magic by sitting at a desk and taking notes. You can only learn magic by doing magic.
Maybe being homeschooled, Carter didn’t realize that “test” is normally a bad thing.
Ammit the Devourer, cute little thing.
It’s a rare thing when an adult admits they are wrong to a child.
It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.
She was beautiful the way an atomic explosion is beautiful.
Men Ask for Directions (and Other Signs of the Apocalypse)
“Sadie,” he said forlornly, “when you become a parent, you may understand this. One of my hardest jobs as a father, one of my greatest duties, was to realize that my own dreams, my own goals and wishes, are secondary to my children’s. Your mother and I have set the stage. But it is
your stage.
Have you ever noticed how parents can go from the most wonderful people in the world to totally embarrassing in three seconds?
MARRIED BY MORNING,
Lisa Kleypas:
We all have regrets. It's why I cling to my bad habits. One doesn't have to start regretting
something unless one stops doing it.
Virtue in a woman is like pepper in the soup. A little makes for a nice seasoning. But overdo it, and no one wants very much of you
There are some experiences in life they haven’t invented the right words for.
There’s nothing more tedious than people who like to talk about themselves.
Revenge is the act of a despicable and petty character. Which is no doubt why I’ve always enjoyed it so much.
You really should discard your inhibitions. They could get in the way of yielding to temptation.
One isn’t improved by being at the top of the mountain, one is improved by the climb.
"You … you are so…” She couldn’t even think of a suitable word. “I know. Woefully primitive.” Laughter threaded through his voice. “But I must be tolerated, because I’m a man and I really can’t help it.”
I’m waging war, love. And the only way to win this kind of war is to make you want to lose.
In the face of a love this vast, a man could only surrender.
ENDSo here's a question for you, dear reader, do you ever get that feeling, that moment of clarity, that rush of excitement, that epiphany right when you read a line so perfect you hear the wheels turning in your head making you go "Yes, that's it exactly!" and once you do... commit it to memory (or, more efficiently, write it down somewhere so that you may return to it in the future when time has weathered your brain and made you more forgetful)?
I've recently started doing that since deciding it's high time I re-read all of my books as well as read some new ones. It's therapeutic. I recommend it to all who have free time.
Happy reading,
Essa.
